La politique fiscale peut-elle motiver les actions en faveur du climat?

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L’École de comptabilité, en collaboration avec le Centre d’expertise de pratique professionnelle de la comptabilité-Mallette, vous convie à la présentation de la recherche Code red for humanity! Can tax policy motivate climate change actions? du professeur Edward Gamble.

La présentation se déroulera en anglais

Résumé

Scholars have long emphasized that climate change is one of the most pressing ethical dilemmas facing humanity. In proposing policies that positively address climate change, governments face the daunting task of gaining support from citizens who often have polarized views about climate change. Choice architecture theory (Thaler, Sunstein, & Balz, 2013) suggests that the context in which people make decisions and the specific information presented impacts individual decisions. Two important aspects of choice architect theory are frames and messages. In the present study, we examine whether designing a climate change tax policy using either a penalty or incentive frame, along with different messaging strategies (i.e., mechanistic, reasons-based, storytelling or no message related to climate change), impacts the effectiveness of the policy. To examine whether these aspects of choice architecture can impact the effectiveness of the policy, we use an on-line experiment with 347 participants recruited through MTurk.

While we find that framing a tax provision as a penalty is less effective than framing it as an incentive, we find that the messaging moderates the impact of the frame. Penalty provisions are more effective when paired with a step-by-step explanation of how climate change will affect the earth (a mechanistic nudge) while incentive frames are more effective when paired with a personal climate change narrative (a storytelling nudge). In supplemental analysis, we further examine those participants with the most strongly polarized views about climate change, finding that political affiliation is the most distinguishing characteristics between the groups. Further, the groups differ in their trust in governments, view of the world, contempt for others, and willingness to compromise.